“We have only this moment,
sparkling like a star in our hand...
and melting like a snowflake.”

The Treasure Map

William Blake's Ancient of Days
Check out first the posts "Alien Within" and "The Great Mystery".

Excerpt from Aldous Huxley's book "
The Perennial Philosophy", chapter "Time and Eternity":
"(...) The Sufi", says Jalal-uddin Rumi, "is the son of time present". Spiritual progress is a spiral advance. We start as infants in the animal eternity of life in the moment, without anxiety for the future or regret for the past; we grow up into the specifically human condition of those who look before and after, who live to a great extent, not in the present but in memory and anticipation, not spontaneously but by rule and with prudence, in repentance and fear and hope; and we can continue, if we so desire, up and on in a returning sweep towards a point corresponding to our starting place in animality, but incommensurably above it.

Civilisation, the Ego and Fear

In Hoc Signo Vintes by Zdzisław Beksiński
I'll try to explain with this post the relationship between civilisation, the ego and fear.

What is the Ego?

The Ego is a mechanism, or a filter, that our minds create to keep us in tune with the reality in which we live. The Ego is constantly making a censorship of the infinity of information and sensations that constantly surround us, allowing in only the signals that comply with our mental program (our belief systems, behaviour patterns, education, etc) that we have assimilated since the early days of childhood. This mechanism is very important for the psychological integrity of the individual.